This comic is a satirical infographic, which is usually used to simplify and help visualize information that would be dreadfully boring otherwise. Randall takes this "simplification" to the extreme by making an unhelpful infographic, complete with unnecessary data and ironic and blatant misuse of common graphs and charts. At this point, he is not even simplifying his sentence "By the year 2019, all information will be communicated in this clear and concise format." He makes a sarcastic claim, pointing out how needlessly complicated some infographics make things they are supposed to condense.

In the chart:

The number 2019 is huge and placed between the numbers 2018 and 2020, which is bordering on extraneous considering that the fact that 2019 precedes 2020 and succeeds 2018 is blindingly obvious.

The graph of information represented by this format is extrapolated off of and intersects with 100% at 2019. This is a running joke on xkcd and is ridiculous for multiple reasons, as shown in 605: Extrapolating and 1007: Sustainable.

A pie chart, with one part labeled "will" and one part labeled "be", which is completely nonsensical as pie charts compare the sizes of two populations, and "will" and "be" are merely words and are not being used as populations.

"6 years from now" is more blindingly obvious fact at the time (2013).

"72 months" is an unneeded and obvious conversion from six years; it is also false precision as 2019 (January 1st) arrives 63 months from the comic date. The word "months" is also split across two lines, mid-syllable.

A corny illustration of Megan telling Hairy the word "communicated" and Hairy enthusiastically responding "Yes!", despite the absurdity of the situation.

The word "this" in huge font, and the word "in" with a bracket, taking up an inordinate amount of space.

A Venn diagram. As anyone who has seen a Venn diagram knows, the two circles are two concepts or qualities, and objects or concepts that fit inside the circles go within. The words "clear and concise" plastered across the Venn diagram have absolutely nothing to do with Venn diagrams, and are ludicrously inappropriate for this jumbled and overblown presentation, but the word "AND" is in the intersection of the two circles, which is meta-humorous.

In the lowermost bar graph, the bar height shows the alphabetic position of each letter of the word FORMAT, with T highlighted because it is the highest.

It is also likely that this comic is a send up of the recent trend towards presenting information in tall graphics that are easily viewed on smartphone screens. A tall graphic with the same pixel width as an iPhone, for example, can viewed without zooming and using only vertical scrolling. Another discussion venue for the topic and this comic is Gizmodo: Tall Infographics Suck.

The title text mentions the often-hyped term "big data." "Big data" normally refers to the challenges of working with and visualizing a quantity of data which is hard to process using traditional tools and methods. Randall, now speaking unsarcastically, tells us that just because the font size is huge doesn't mean you have handled the big data well.

Discussion

I'm not really sure how to transcribe an infographic... Sorry. Saibot84 04:17, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I tried to expand on it a bit, sorry if it's not the best. ollien 04:20, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

For anyone wondering if the "FORMAT" frequency graph is self-referential to the entire comic... no, or at least not on actual explicit instances of the letters (certainly nowhere near 26 Ts, and even proportionally the As are vastly the most frequent and Fs the actual least, the rest almost identical), but I wouldn't put it past Randall having taken into account cummulative font-size, or something like that. 178.98.253.80 07:23, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I think this comic might be inspired by that infographic which was recently published regarding an attack against a botnet. (At least that was my first association - and I, too, found that graphic a little unsuitable when I saw it in the news) -- Xorg (talk) 12:42, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Search for "infographics" at google images and you will find thousands other examples.--Dgbrt (talk) 12:50, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I think there is more to the explanation: Big Data mostly will be analyzed statistically, so we will get diverse diagrams and infographics as result. The trend will be an increase in the number of cases where informationen is presented in this way. Sebastian --178.26.98.211 14:23, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Note that Big Data is used nowadays as a buzzword, even if you don't have that much data. Remember: if your data cannot be processed by Excel, it isn't big. --JakubNarebski (talk) 14:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

More accurately: Just because your data cannot be processed by Excel, that doesn't make it big.--108.162.216.21 13:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I read the Venn diagram to mean that data would be either clear OR concise, if you took it literally.75.120.198.118 08:38, 6 October 2013 (UTC)gonzo

I don't think that's quite right. The Venn diagram is intended to be just as superfluously self evident as the other graphics. The set of all things "Clear" intersects with the set of all things "Concise" in the region "And".

"In the pie chart, the areas represent the proportion of letters in each word." - this isn't right; the area for "will" is three times the size of the area for "be". It could be comparing the number of consonants in each word. 86.128.6.174 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"will" and "be" are both forms of the verb "to be". "Be" is therefore merely the infinitive, while "will" is both a conjugated form (3rd person singular) and in the future tense. Therefore "will" has three levels of meaning to "be"'s one... ;) 108.162.229.122 12:49, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

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